Road deaths

Today is not yet over here in Ireland and the year is about half way through.
To date this year, 200 people have died in a total of 173 road accidents in Ireland. This is 18 more than the same period last year. Tonight it Friday night, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that 2 or 3 more might die before the six months are up.

We have a population in the region of 4 million.
Our motorists drive like maniacs, very obviously. And they persistently drive while intoxicated.

Our police force is stretched coping with all the calls upon its time and resources. Penalty points for certain offences were introduced and seem to have had no effect. 2, 3, 4 or 5 points may be awarded for certain offences and if you accumulate 12 or more in 3 years you lose your licence for at least 6 months.

Our motorists drive like maniacs, very obviously. And they persistently drive while intoxicated.

Click to expand...

Sadly I am of the firm belief that this reprehensible behaviour is limited to the portion of the Globe containing alcohol and cars and people and you could probably eliminate the cars and alcohol and the behaviour would probably continue.

ukaca, you surprise me - very interesting. In Spain, I see it as very difficult. There is very much a feeling that you are infringing on personal liberty by asking people not to drink and drive/drive too fast etc. People seem to agree in principle that the laws should be applied more/be stricter, as long as that doesn't include ME!! Tomorrow the points system on the driving licence comes into force. To me it seems very liberal -you can drink and drive three times before they take away your licence, you can reverse on a motorway twice before they take it away.... incredibly, most discussion in Spain has centred around whether the new system is too TOUGH...!!!!

They have scary injury numbers indeed, after your post I checked them, no decimal missing... But don't forget, this chart belongs to year 1997. The situation may be different. But I can easily say that in Turkey it is worse than these numbers. The chart is taken from a search institution about traffic accidents in Turkey (TUTEV).

Since 1997, the penalties have gone enough tought in Turkey but accidents has never stopped and increased to worse. As I heard, population of Turkey is equal to vehicles (motorcycles don't count in this study) in Turkey. In Istanbul where 12 million people live, there are only 4 metro lines. I guess something is wrong. No one seems to encourage mass transportation and some sectors of economy gets great profits.

ukaca, you surprise me - very interesting. In Spain, I see it as very difficult. There is very much a feeling that you are infringing on personal liberty by asking people not to drink and drive/drive too fast etc. People seem to agree in principle that the laws should be applied more/be stricter, as long as that doesn't include ME!! Tomorrow the points system on the driving licence comes into force. To me it seems very liberal -you can drink and drive three times before they take away your licence, you can reverse on a motorway twice before they take it away.... incredibly, most discussion in Spain has centred around whether the new system is too TOUGH...!!!!

I am not familiar with the total statistics in Germany, but in Hamburg (population about 1 mill.) alone we had about 90 deaths last year, half of them pedestrians.
I remember hearing the numbers some 10 years ago. We totalled 150 then. I cannot tell why things improved.